Frank Munsey

Frank Munsey

Frank Andrew Munsey (21 August 1854 – 22 December 1925) was an American newspaper and magazine publisher and author. He was born in Mercer, Maine but spent most of his life in New York City. The village of Munsey Park, New York is named for him.

Munsey is credited with the idea of using new high-speed printing presses to print on inexpensive, untrimmed, pulp paper to mass produce affordable (typically ten cent) magazines. Chiefly filled with various genres of action and adventure fiction, thet were aimed at working-class readers who could not afford and were not interested in the content of the 25-cent "slick" magazines of the time. This innovation, known as pulp magazines, became an entire industry unto itself and made Munsey quite wealthy. He often shut down the printing process and changed the content of magazines when they became unprofitable, quickly starting new ones in their place.

Beginnings

Early in life, Munsey ran a general store, at which he failed. He next became a telegraph operator and then manager of the Augusta, Maine Western Union telegraph office. The publishing industry was a formitable industry in Augusta at the time. Munsey was very ambitious, and being in charge of the telegraph office (a vital connection for the news media of his day) gave him a unique insight of the printing business. In 1882 he moved from Augusta to New York City and entered the publishing industry, having used his savings to purchase rights to several stories. He formed a partnership with a friend in New York and an Augusta stock broker. After arriving in New York, the stock broker backed out of the agreement and released his friend from any further financial obligations. Approaching a New York publisher, Munsey managed to edit and produce the first issue of his magazine, Golden Argosy, only two months and nine days after his arrival.

However, five months later, the publisher went bankrupt and entered receivership. By placing a claim for his unpaid salary, Munsey was able to take control of the magazine. Borrowing $300 from a friend in Maine, he barely managed to keep the magazine going while learning enough about the publishing industry to eventually succeed.

Publications

Golden Argosy was a weekly "boys adventure" magazine in a dime novel format with a mix of both articles and fiction. After a few years, Munsey realized that targeting a young audience had been a mistake, as they were hard readers to retain since they rapidly grew out of the publication, and since children of the time had very little spending money, advertisers were not interested in such a publication. In 1888, the name was changed to The Argosy to attract an older audience. In 1894 it became a monthly, designed to complement Munsey's Magazine, and in December 1896 it became the first true pulp, switching to an all-fiction format of 192 pages on seven-by-ten inch untrimmed pulp paper. It was renamed Argosy Magazine, and by 1903, circulation climbed to a half million copies per month.

In 1889 he founded Munsey's Weekly, a 36-page quarto magazine, designed to be "a magazine of the people and for the people, with pictures and art and good cheer and human interest throughout."^[1] It was a success, soon selling 40,000 copies per week. In 1891 the magazine became a monthly, Munsey's Magazine, in 1892 the magazine began to include a "complete novel" in every issue, and in 1893 the price was dropped to ten cents per issue. By 1895 circulation was over half a million copies per month, by 1897, 700,000 copies per month. In October, 1906, he began publishing Railroad Man's Magazine, the first specialized pulp magazine which featured railroad related stories and articles. It was soon followed by a similar magazine, The Ocean, which featured sea stories and articles. The Ocean debuted with the March 1907 issue; after the January 1908 issue, it changed title and content to the general purpose The Live Wire, which also had a short run.

Newspapers

Munsey was very active in the newspaper industry, at one time or another owning at least 17 different newspapers. As the number of newspapers in America declined, Munsey became known for merging many of his properties; though probably financially wise, this earned him a great deal of enmity from those who worked in the industry. His papers included:

• Washington Times (1901)
• New York Daily News (operated 1901-1904)
• The Boston Journal (1902) (sold to Matthew Hale on March 10, 1913)
• Baltimore News-American
• Philadelphia Evening Times (discontinued in 1914)
• New York Herald (bought in 1920 along with the Paris Herald and the New York Evening Telegram, later the New York World-Telegram for four million dollars, sold in 1924 to Ogden Mills Reid, who merged it with his own New York Tribune)
• The New York Sun (merged with the Herald in 1920)
• New York Press (merged with the Herald in 1916)
• The Mail
• The Globe

The sale of the Herald in 1924 left Munsey owning only two newspapers.^[2] The Evening Telegram was sold to Scripps-Howard in 1927, two years after Munsey's death.

Other Munsey pulps and magazines included Puritan, Junior Munsey, All-Story Magazine, Scrap Book, Cavalier, Railroad and Current Mechanics.

Munsey also authored several novels:

• Afloat in a Great City (1887)
• The Boy Broker (1888)
• A Tragedy of Errors (1889)
• Under Fire (1890)
• Derringforth (1894)

Politics

Munsey became directly involved in presidential politics when former President Theodore Roosevelt announced his candidacy to challenge his hand-picked successor William Taft for the 1912 Republican Party nomination for the presidency. Munsey and George W. Perkins provided the financial backing for Roosevelt's campaign leading up to the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Roosevelt supporters bolted from the convention, Munsey was one of the most outspoken critics of the proceedings and announced that Roosevelt would run at the head of a new party. His encouragement and offer of financial backing led to the formation of the Progressive Party, which nominated Roosevelt for president. Munsey was one of its most ardent supporters and one of the largest contributors to its campaign expenses.^[3]

Demise and legacy

Munsey died in New York City December 22, 1925 of a burst appendix at age 71. In his will he made large bequests to his sister, nephew and niece, generous bequests to many cousins, and gifts and annuities to a large number of old acquaintances. He also bestowed large sums to 17 of his upper management employees, but nothing to the numerous employees who worked for him. Surprisingly, he bequeathed an annuity of $2000 to Annie Downs, a love interest of the young Munsey who "turned him down for marriage because she didn't think he was a good enough prospect for success." Munsey also contributed considerably to Bowdoin College, the Maine State Hospital at Portland, and Central Main General Hospital at Lewiston. All the remainder of his fortune he gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The village of Munsey Park, New York was founded on land owned by Munsey in 1922. At the time of his death his fortune was estimated to be $20 million to $40 million. Today with the rate of inflation it would be valued at $250 million to $500 million.

After his death, the Frank A. Munsey Company continued publishing various magazines, including pulp detective fiction, such as (Flynn's) Detective Fiction and All-Story Love. In 1942 they sold out to rival pulp publisher Popular Publications.

References

Flynn's Detective Fiction (1941), one of the magazines published by Frank A. Munsey Co. long after his death.

• Chace, James. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs — The Election That Changed the Country. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. ISBN 0-7432-0394-1
• Haining, Peter. The Fabulous Pulps. Vintage Books (a division of Random House), 1975. ISBN 0-394-72109-8
• Britt, George "Forty Years — Forty Millions, The Career of Frank A. Munsey". Copyright 1935. Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. Murray Hill, New York

• Munsey, Frank A. (December 1907). The Founding of the Munsey Publishing-House. De Vinne Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=_m4I9JEy5P0C.  Subtitles: Quarter of a Century Old : The Story of The Argosy, Our First Publication, and Incidentally the Story of Munsey's Magazine

Notes

External links

• Fact Monster People: Frank A. Munsey
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Frank Andrew Munsey
• "The Pulps" by Peter Haining
• ThePulp.Net's Pulp.History page
• Collecting Pulp Fiction article at AbeBooks.com.
• Pulpworld.com Munsey biography
• History of the Munsey Publishing Company, by Frank Munsey, published 1907, for the company's 25th anniversary
• Issue History
• Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.